Yeah, the camera always shows Coop on the phone to the bullpen, but the more important question is who decides which pitchers are going to start getting ready? Does Robin tell him who to get started, or is it Coop's decision?

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"Nellie Fox, that little son of a gun, was always on base and was a great hit-and-run man. He sprayed hits all over."
Yogi Berra in the New York Sunday News (July 12, 1970)

Hm, except that yes, they do. Hard to argue the wild card doesn't count for anything when the defending World Champion of Base Ball was a wild card winner.

And the Marlins have two more World Series championships although they have never finished first. The problem is that the wild card isn't a goal so much as a concession. In recent years, teams were willing to play for the wild card without going all out for the division championship because the seeding advantage wasn't an advantage worth going all out for. The Tigers lost their last five games to fall out of first and still made it to the World Series, erasing memoris of their epic collapse.

Does any team set out to defend their wild card title? The only reason baseball has a wild card is that it has two major leagues with three divisions each. You need another team in each league to have two playoff rounds. The only penalty for a team that collapses at the end of the season shouldn't be a bad seed, especially with seeding based on wins and losses having so little meaning in major league baseball.

I think setting up a play-in game for the two best teams that didn't win anything is a better way to run a wild card. The baseball season means something. If you are going to have a wild card, don't let the team coast into the postseaon as the Braves and Rangers seemed to be doing. The wild card has been around so long that younger fans have lost perspective.

I think setting up a play-in game for the two best teams that didn't win anything is a better way to run a wild card. The baseball season means something. If you are going to have a wild card, don't let the team coast into the postseaon as the Braves and Rangers seemed to be doing. The wild card has been around so long that younger fans have lost perspective.

Baseball season totally means something, which is why the 88-win Cardinals are about to take a 2-1 series lead over the 98-win Nationals.

I'm not going to put forth the effort of looking it up, but if that was one of the biggest chokes in franchise history, the franchise hasn't had too many big chokes.

No offense ,but did you watch the end of the season ? That was the very definition of a choke job. Couldn't buy a hit with runners in scoring position, got owned by the Royals. It HAS to be one of the bigger chokes in Sox history, and that is saying something, because just in the past 15 years there have been several.

Baseball season totally means something, which is why the 88-win Cardinals are about to take a 2-1 series lead over the 98-win Nationals.

It isn't that teams that don't deserve to be in the postseason can't win in the postseason. If, hypothetically, the wild card were selected by lot and the Mariners were the AL wild card, they might have a shot, especially with their pitching, to win best-of-five and best-of-seven series. They certainly showed they could consistently beat the Tigers during the regular season.

Teams who haven't earned their way into the baseball postseason by winning a division over 162 games over six months can be competitive and can win. Expand the postseason and you expand the possibilities that a team that didn't earn the right to compete for the championship. The NCAA basketball championship has expanded to the point where the champion is more of a tournament champion than a season champion of the sport, as it was when only conference champions and strongest independents were competing. I don't know of any sport where a team has won a championship after achieving a regular season .500-or-less record, but the way sports open up their championship playoffs, it is bound to happen.

At least the Cardinals had to earn the wild card spot by winning a play-in game. The Nationals may end up winning the series, but it is looking like it was the Cardinals' good fortune to go up against a team with management that doesn't seem to care about winning a championship.

The Browns won a divisional title one year with a record of 8-8 and in 1994 at the time the labor impasse stopped games the Rangers were in 1st place in the Western Division despite being 10 games under .500.

Had they played the rest of the final six weeks it's very doubtful Texas could have won enough to finish over .500 (all the other teams were even worse in the standings...) So it probably would have happened in baseball for the first time.

No offense ,but did you watch the end of the season ? That was the very definition of a choke job. Couldn't buy a hit with runners in scoring position, got owned by the Royals. It HAS to be one of the bigger chokes in Sox history, and that is saying something, because just in the past 15 years there have been several.

None taken. I watched as much as I could stomach. Getting owned by the Royals happened all year. Losing to them in September wasn't choking. Being up 2 games with 2 weeks to go and losing the division to the more talented team was not a choke job.

The Browns won a divisional title one year with a record of 8-8 and in 1994 at the time the labor impasse stopped games the Rangers were in 1st place in the Western Division despite being 10 games under .500.

Had they played the rest of the final six weeks it's very doubtful Texas could have won enough to finish over .500 (all the other teams were even worse in the standings...) So it probably would have happened in baseball for the first time.

Lip

If you are talking about the NFL, it was 1985.

More recently, the Chargers in 2008 and Denver in 2011 both won divisions at 8-8. Seatle won their division at 7-9 in 2010. All three of those teams ended up winning a playoff game.